Crane Brinton's Theory Of Revolution

In his book, Anatomy of Revolution, Brinton compares
revolution to a fever. In this respect, a revolution is not a
positive phenomena, it is something to be avoided and cured,
when and if, it occurs. This is due to the fact that "nobody
wants to have a fever" (Brinton, 18). However, fever, and
Revolution, "in itself is a good thing....for the organism
that survives it. ...The revolution destroys wicked people and
harmful and useless institutions" (18). Brinton breaks down
the revolution into three entities: the symptoms, the fever
itself, which is the manipulation of revolution, and the break
of the fever, when things more or less return to normal.
Symptoms can take several different forms: economic problems,
inefficiency of the government, the rise of the
self-proclaimed revolutionaries, and the overthrow of the old regime,
followed by the breakup of the revolutionaries' coalition. In
the early stages of the revolution itself, Brinton sees the
moderates seize power, but then the extremists take that power
away from them. Then the fever breaks, Thermidor occurs and
the revolution is over. In Brinton's view there is nothing
much that can be done about revolutionaries, the fever has to
burn out on its own. In his book, Crane Brinton uses the
American Revolution as one of his examples. One assumes that
he vies the American Revolution as a real Revolution, though
the author states that it does not fit perfectly his
conceptual schemes (24). Brinton sees the American Revolution as a
territorial-nationalist one, in which the aim of the
revolutionaries was not to overturn the existing "social and economic
system, but rather to set the English North American colonies
up as an independent nation-state" (22).

The symptoms part of Brinton's Revolution theory shall be
discussed first. There were economic problems, since America
refused to pay taxes to England. The taxation without
representation' slogan of the 1700s was enough to excite Americans
to action (29). There was "no class ground down with poverty"
(31) but the "economic stresses and strains" (31) contributed
to a feeling that prevailing conditions limited and hardened
the colonists' economic activity (33). Thus, Brinton sees the
economic symptoms of the American Revolution being the
economic grievances "of some of the chief enterprising groups that
[saw] their opportunities for getting on in this world [as]
unduly limited by political arrangements" (34). The second
symptom was the inefficiency of the British government.
Revolution occurred because the "practical constraints of the
British political scene in 1766, 1770, and 1775 always
rendered impossible any policy that would match the colonial demands"
(Thomas, 334). America emerged from its Revolution
"with more efficient and more centralized government" (Brinton, 240).
The third symptom was the rise of
revolutionaries, mostly the army and those who supported the Revolutionary War.
"It was the merchants who first organized opposition to the Crown" (99).
American society of the late 1700s was
rural not urban (100), and the strength of the revolutionary
"movement lay with the plain people... - country artisans,
small farmers, and frontiersmen" (100). However, Brinton also
agrees Alexander Graydon that the " opposition to the claims
of Britain originated with the better sort: it was truly
aristocratical in its commencement'" (100). The patriots knew
they wanted to separate from Britain. The overthrow of the
old regime is an interesting phenomena, because the British
government continued to exist, and is sill active today.
However, that regime was overthrown in the American colonies,
and a completely new government, a republic, was set up. The
last symptom does not fit the American example very well. The
revolutionary coalition did not break up.
George Washington,
who led the American Army in the Revolutionary War, became the
first President. This leads to Brinton's stages of
Revolution, the first of which is the seizure of power by the
moderates, and the soon after taking of that power by the
extremists. Brinton sees no victory of extremists over moderates
in America (24).
The third part of Brinton's theory is the
break up of the fever, the occurrence of Thermidor, and the
end of the Revolution. Brinton believes America "never quite
went through a reign of terror" (24), but that the "relaxation
of the war discipline and war tension and a grand renewal for
wealth and pleasure" (235) led to a real Thermidor. "There
was even a moral let down" (235) in America, which
lamented the spirit of speculation which war and its attendant
disturbances had generated, the restlessness of the
young, disrespect for tradition and authority, increase
in crime, the frivolity and extravagance of society.
All this sounds very like the original Thermidor (236)
to Brinton.

Only parts of Brinton's theory fit the American example.
Enough of them match his definition and his stages of this
phenomena that one must agree that the American Revolution was
a true Revolution. However, other scholars may not agree.